


syncopation

by macabre



Series: rhythm and meter [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Peter Parker, Mute Peter Parker, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Peter is on the spectrum - somewhere, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark adopts Peter Parker, Tony is Peter's Kid, biologically or not, choose your canon adventure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 08:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: Tony isn’t sure how he ended up with a kid who doesn’t talk; the cynics would call it karma he guesses, or maybe the universe thinks it’s funny. It’s one of the first thing that absolutely everyone who meets Peter remarks - wow, he’s quiet, but hey! I guess you talk enough for the two of you, Tony!(AU: Peter is on the spectrum and nonverbal. This does not make him less of a genius or less of Tony's precious kid.)





	syncopation

**Author's Note:**

> This is a choose your own canon adventure: read this as a Tony adopts Peter fic, a Peter is Tony's biological kid fic, etc.

Tony isn’t sure how he ended up with a kid who doesn’t talk; the cynics would call it karma he guesses, or maybe the universe thinks it’s funny. It’s one of the first thing that absolutely everyone who meets Peter remarks - wow, he’s quiet, but hey! I guess you talk enough for the two of ya, Tony!  
  
    People think it’s hilarious until Peter also refuses to look them in the eye or let anyone get more than three feet within his reach. If a noise is too loud he’ll start tapping his foot, harder and harder, faster and faster until he lashes out and kicks something close to him. There are a few holes in the walls, there are broken chairs and lamps. Tony has gone floor by floor in the tower to put in sound buffering layers for the kid and childproofed his home in an entirely different capacity than most.    
  
    There are lots of things Peter does to indicate to others around him - almost immediately after meeting the kid they look at Tony with such fucking pity in their eyes. It drives him nuts. They don’t see the kid in his element - they don’t see him in the lab working on shit that will literally change their fucking world. They don’t know that he’s taught Tony Stark a thing or too in organic chemistry. They don’t see Peter slowly opening up day by day, curled up next to Tony on the couch or sometimes even Happy.  
  
    Shit, he thought Happy would cry the first time it happened - and that man sat stone faced through Titanic back in 1997.    
  
    “So he’s mute?” the admissions people ask when Tony shops for a new high school to put him in.  
  
    “Nonverbal,” he corrects. Who says mute anymore? Pete’s not an orphan living in a Charles Dickens novel. “He does communicate.” This is partially a lie - Peter really doesn’t communicate with many people - just himself, Happy, and Pepper. They’re working on getting Rhodey inside the group, but it’s slow going. Tony thinks the kid feels overwhelmed with just the social interactions of three people.  
  
    “He signs?”  
  
    “Kind of.”  
  
    Peter has made his own signs, of course. Nothing from ASL, and not anything as extensive as a language either, but Peter naturally wrings his hands and makes different formations with his fingers that Tony has established some meaning to. When he points these out to Happy and Pepper, they look between him and Peter and nod. They don’t see it as well as Tony does, but then again - they just don’t spend as much time with him.  
  
    They’re working on incorporating ASL. Obviously, Peter is more than capable of picking it up easily, but he guesses when the need doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter.  
  
    “He doesn’t sign because he doesn’t need to,” the language specialist says. “You know what he’s trying to communicate with what he already does, so why would he branch out into something else?”  
  
    Stop coddling him is basically what they tell Tony. You’re not doing him any favors, they say. But damn - it continually amazes him what Peter does and doesn’t do, and he’s not about to dictate something as fundamental as talking to his kid, not when he wakes up from a dream where Howard Stark is mocking his newest project or sneering at him over a glass of Scotch.  
  
    Tony gives up on getting the kid into any kind of traditional school and homeschools him instead. Yes, he, Tony Stark, is homeschooling someone. Willingly. Well, out of necessity. It’s not as if Tony thinks there is anyone better suited to do it, it’s more that Peter deserves to have a diploma from a nice school. He finds out there is an option for Peter to take something like a GED from a local public school so he can have that institute’s name on the diploma, so he arranges the test and waits patiently outside the room they put in him.  
  
    The first try is disastrous. Tony isn’t allowed to go in with him, and Peter freaks out when the proctor gets too close for too long. Peter’s first defense is just that - he’ll curl in on himself in the smallest way possible, a pile of Peter so small that he fits neatly in Tony’s lap, but if he’s pushed he will lash out. The proctor runs out into the hall rubbing his forearm where Peter stabbed a pencil and Tony goes in to quiet the screams.  
  
    Because he’s Tony Stark he can bribe his way into more tests, and Peter eventually graduates high school nearly the same age Tony did. This fact does little to impress anyone when they look at Peter though; all they can see is the rocking and the hand wringing.    
  
    On his worst days, Tony also thinks about Pete in terms of what if - what if he could go to MIT, just like Tony did? What if Peter could learn to drive his favorite car, even if he did put a ding in it? What if he could get the kid a matching suit just to embarrass him at a party, parading him about in front of everyone?  
  
    But then Tony remembers his own father and every idea Howard ever had for him.  
  
    On Peter’s good days, he will sit pressed up against Tony, as if any air in-between their bodies offends him suddenly. These times come and go quickly - Tony has reached the point that he can touch Peter any time he needs to, but he knows to do so sparingly unless Peter comes to him first.  
  
    People so frequently underestimate the kid that Tony sometimes does too; Tony takes a meeting with a few scientists working on his west coast board and takes Peter along. The kid is sitting quietly in the chair next to him, eyes glazed over in the direction of the table in front of him. Some of the scientists ignore the kid, some glance back and forth. Anger flares up in Tony over the slightest looks - Peter has a reputation of being difficult just like Tony, and it’s like they’re just waiting for a tantrum when in reality the kid is acting like a fucking angel.  
  
    The meeting is wrapping up and Tony is doing the hand shaking, good job, I’ll see you in a few months round up when a hand shyly wraps itself up in his sleeve. Peter is standing stock still at his side all of sudden, but he’s got some papers in his hand. Tony didn’t give him anything so he gently pries them out from Peter’s grip.  
  
    “Well, well, look at this,” Tony says, flipping through the pages. There is a lot of chicken scratch over the printed numbers and equations. “Looks like my kid corrected your formulas for you.”  
  
    They look at his gobsmacked, and the lead of the project - it’s either Goldring or Gobling or something like that - insists everything is correct and working.  
  
    “You take a look at this and give me a call later,” Tony says. He wish he could gloat louder, but Peter is standing so close to him. He gently slides his hand over the top of Peter’s and points his index finger over it. Taps.  
  
    Later he finds a sparsely populated cafe midday and drops some extra tip money for them to turn off their music for an hour. He orders things he thinks Peter might eat today - a BLT and mac and cheese - but a few things just to tease him, like key lime key. He has sensitive taste buds, and even at a place like this it would probably be too tart for him, but Tony relishes the opportunity to see Peter’s noise wrinkle up in displeasure because he knows it’s not enough to really set him off.  
  
    Every once in awhile Tony has to leave Peter behind for an international trip - Peter can’t do the longer flights easily, and he’s at a point now where Happy can watch him for a few days on his own. This time, it’s Happy and Pepper who stand behind Peter when Tony takes off.  
  
    There was once a time when Tony looked forward to these times apart, just for a breath of air and space to himself, but as Peter has gotten older the days apart seem too quiet, which is funny, even to Tony. Long gone are the days when he’d blast AC/DC in his lab. Silence or dim white noise fills the halls of his homes now, and Peter’s presence only products a flat fist against his side or two fingers tapping at his chin, yet being away from him is too quiet.  
  
    Peter always draws his index finger flat across the back of Tony’s hand when he leaves, but when he comes back the kid avoids him for a day, mad at Tony for leaving. He draws Peter back out with little puzzles left around the floor that eventually draw him down into the lab. This time, it doesn’t work. Peter stays holed up in his room, and when Tony hovers in the doorway to check on him, he can see Peter’s annoyance vibrating under the skin. He hasn’t had anything to eat that day, so Tony drags in a bowl of plain rice and chicken, because he can’t risk anything else, but Peter is lying on his side in bed turned away from him.  
  
    Tony very slowly and carefully puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder; Peter doesn’t react at all, which instantly raises alarm bells. Without moving him, Tony reaches around and presses his other hand on Peter’s forehead. Definitely warm.  
  
    The first time Pete got sick on him Tony expected the kid to be a terrible patient - that he’d crawl into the tightest spaces and never come down like he does when he’s upset, or lash out and turn to hit him. In reality, he goes completely pliant.  
  
    Once Tony has maneuvered him to the couch in the living room, wrapped up as tightly as possible in his favorite blanket, Happy brings up a couple different kinds of soup and different liquids that Tony takes turns holding up to Peter’s lips. He’s shaking all over, and his hair is plastered down with sweat. When he groans, Tony jumps, because it’s so rare for him to make any kind of sound, even a minimal one like that.  
  
    Setting down the Gatorade he’s got, he maneuvers Peter so he’s lying fully down. The kid tucks his head into Tony’s lap with a hand shaking outside of the blanket. It’s just sitting there, waiting. Tony taps, then Peter completely retreats. They sit like that on the couch, and Tony Stark can wonder and pretend and what if it was always like this, where he could so easy run his hands through the kid’s mop and not worry about the repercussions.  
  
    Peter’s fever lasts two days, so Tony gets little done and instead enjoys the tactile side of caring for a kid. They laze about the couch a lot, but he also gives Peter a piggyback ride around the floor, just to see a crack of a smile. His hot breaths puff against the back of Tony’s neck, and when he sets him down he kisses the top of his head noisily. Peter physically pushes Tony face away from his, so he laughs a bit too loudly.  
  
    He can tell the fever is about to break when Peter scowls and slips away to the other side of the couch the next day. Tony is relieve of course - he’s gotten little done work wise and nothing has stayed down food wise for Peter, and the kid’s too thin as it is. He makes a few of Peter’s favorite home cooked meals and has Happy bring a few from local places. Sets up a banquet for the kid and goes back to work.  
  
    Once the kid is completely back to normal, Rhodey comes down to stay for a few days. A calm Peter is still but with quick eyes - a nervous Peter is a lot of pacing and walking in and out of rooms. He clenches and unclenches his jaw constantly, so Tony knows he needs to put out the pain meds for him later. His jaw will hurt like a bitch, and he won’t say a word until Tony catches him with tears in his eyes.  
  
    Still, he gets him to sit down at the table for awhile while Rhodey is slowly nursing a beer and careful not to look in Peter’s direction too much. By the time Rhodey leaves on Sunday, Peter electively sits next to the other man while working on his paper, and shows it to him. Tony helped him get one published recently under a pseudonym, so the kid is eager to finish another one.  
  
    One day, he vows that Peter will be able to publish under his own name without any negative connotations, but he’s too young for Tony to fight that battle for him now.  
  
    “I’m here to translate that for you if you need, honeybear,” Tony jokes, and Rhodey rolls his eyes. “The kid’s a genius you know, and he just helped me solve a little problem with the reactor the other week.”  
  
    He sees his oldest friend out when he leaves. Standing on 5th Ave, Rhodey grasps him by the shoulder and says, “Tony, you don’t have to remind everyone how smart Peter is. If they can’t see it for themselves, they’re not worth his or your time.”  
  
    Unexpectedly, Tony’s eyes water.  
  
    “You’re doing a great job, man.”  
  
    For Tony’s birthday that year, Peter surprises him with a pocket sized Iron Man model, fully functioning. A mini drone with similar repulsors and a camera. He’s not sure when the kid built it - he must have had help from Rhodey last time he was around to get all the parts together. At this point he can leave Peter with Rhodey during his trips as well. Rhodey is certainly attached - Peter acts like he could leave or take his interactions with the other man, but Tony assures Rhodey that he’s actually quite fond of him. Well within hugging status soon, he promises.  
  
    Tony takes to flying in the mini Iron Man in the morning to wake Peter until finally it gets broken by some flying object - Tony doesn’t quite see it, only hears it. Peter immediately runs out and begins tapping at Tony.  
  
    “Yeah, yeah, kid, I know you’re sorry.” Tony folds him into his side, and Peter goes quietly. He twists his fingers into his palm - this roughly means build, so he must be promising to fix it.  
  
    Iron Man has been decreasingly active in the past few years - it was a plan that’s been in action for awhile thanks to Pepper. Peter has his own place in this as well - the old parlor trick of calling the armor into the living room has lost its charm, but it’s achieved some form of exposure therapy for Peter with the noise and movement. Unsurprisingly, Peter isn’t a huge fan of Iron Man - and it’s not because of the noise or flashy colors.  
      
    “It’s because he worries about you,” Pepper tells Tony, hands on his shoulder and gripping in a way that almost feels foreign now. “You can’t just not come back, Tony. Pete needs you.”  
  
    In the morning he watches Pepper try and feed Peter, but she’s made the oatmeal too light in color and Peter won’t touch it. She tries fruit next, but she forgets to keep everything separately, which Tony knows if she’d had a cup of coffee she would have recalled. Still, Peter has a lot of affection for Pepper, and Tony knows this because when Fury calls him in for a meeting, he quietly sits next to Pepper and lifts up a hand.  
  
    Pepper looks at Peter, his hand, and Tony. “He’s offering to hold your hand while I’m gone, Pep.”  
  
    Tony knows that when he leaves the tears in her eyes aren’t actually for him, but for Peter. Despite said affection for Pepper, the kid never initiates contact with her. He’s let her hug him some, let her play with his hair and even cut it on the couch, but sustained contact is a whole other thing, and it couldn’t have made Tony any happier.  
  
    He’s still stateside going over their intel with Fury when Maria Hill walks in, and Tony should have known by the careful way she’s holding herself that something is wrong.  
  
    “Scrap that intel. It’s a ruse,” she says, “Tony.”  
      
    He already somehow knows before she says it. “It’s Peter.”  
  
    Having a kid was never part of the plan; his mother would sometimes talk about the joy of parenthood. How there was nothing greater; it was all undercut by the looming shadow of Howard Stark though. When Peter came along, he wanted to give that kid everything, but most of all, he tried to make sure he’d never be a target because of him.  
  
    But all days come, he guesses.  
  
    Rhodey has already taken up a lead on finding him; it’s a dead end, but they pick up an electronic trail the next day when a video is released.  
      
    Peter’s tied up and blindfolded, which is all unnecessary because they’ve figured out that they can incapacitate him with noise. There’s a shrill alarm they’re playing over the video, and Peter alternates between shaking and thrashing on the floor. He’s pale and dirty looking, but it isn’t until video number two that he can see the bruises on the kid. It’s been six days and Tony knows the kid wouldn’t have ate anything, even if it was offered.  
  
    “He’s gonna fucking starve himself if we don’t find him now.”  
  
    Tony ends up taking the bait and letting them draw him in under their demands, but unfortunately for them, they underestimated his kid, just like everyone else. Before they’ve even taken Tony in, the deceptively suburban home they’re keeping him in goes up in flames. There one minute, gone the next - the entire infrastructure has sunken into the ground like a sinkhole.  
  
    After dispatching the goons that had intercepted him on arrival, Rhodey is behind him calling for the fire department. Tony races into the heart of where the house sat - he knows exactly how long the suit can be in the flames, but he can’t see anything.  
  
    “Tony, your twelve o’clock.”  
  
    The back of the house opened up into the woods, and Tony sees him, limping along. Of course that’s where the kid would go - towards the quietest, darkest place available. Tony overshoots him so he’ll land in the kid’s eyesight.  
  
    “Pete!”  
  
    Peter stops, his whole body going still in a way that is completely natural for him but complete unnatural after the week he’s spent in the hands of someone else. The vibrations are faintly there under his skin, but his pupils are blown wide and Tony’s not sure he’s really seeing him.  
  
    “Hey kid, it’s me, okay? Listen to my voice. I’m here to take you home.”  
  
    He’s still standing still, not quite focusing on Tony. He takes a step closer to the kid, but doesn’t want to reach out and grab him until the kid’s all there again. Otherwise he risks him trying to bolt and hurting himself even more - the kid is cradling his arm to his chest. Tony can see bone, and his blood is boiling in his ears.  
      
    Tony steps out of the suit; he can see Rhodey in his line of vision rounding up people. Holds his hands up slowly, flashing some of Peter’s typical gestures. It’s not an exact language - there are only a few things that seem to have constant, concrete meaning. Tony taps his index finger to the back of his own hand, then points to Peter.  
  
    It’s the simplest of their signs, and it’s the one that Tony probably figured out first.  
  
    Peter’s shoulders relax first. His eyes shift downwards, still glazed over, but Tony takes one step after another until his fingers delicately touch Peter’s good arm.  
  
    “Hey kid. I missed you.”  
  
    He can see the scream before it happens - Tony gets too close too fast, so puts up both hands and backs off. Peter’s face is twitching and his mouth is yelling, at first stumbling away from Tony then running for the woods again.  
  
    “Peter!” The suit reassembles around him. Rhodey’s voice is in his ear.  
  
    “What’s the plan here, Tones?”  
  
    They need to secure the scene and get Peter to medical, now. Tony sighs. “FRIDAY. Lock and load the sedatives.”  
  
    They’re something he’s built into his suit specifically for Peter but fortunately never had to use until now. It looks like a tiny dart that slips into the back of Peter’s neck; Tony is behind him to catch him before his knees buckle.  
  
    They have to keep Peter sedated for almost twenty-hour hours while Dr. Cho runs through everything. The arm is broken in three different places and going to need surgery further down the road, there’s a stab wound in his side that was poorly bandaged and dealt with at least a day prior to finding him, and there are third degree burns on his good hand. Plus the bruising and minor scrapes.  
  
    It’s all bad, and Peter doesn’t make for a great patient this time when so many strangers are involved. They have to strap him down to the bed, and that’s when Tony looses it and has to step out. The kid is having a meltdown, but Tony can’t comfort him because they need him to stay put and heal.  
  
    “Tony.” Dr. Cho never calls him Tony. “It’s been too long since he’s had anything to eat.”  
  
    They put in a honest to fucking god feeding tube. It’s awful. Tony had already tried force feeding him the old fashioned way, but the kid was an alarming weight now and they weren’t making progress. Gotta eat to heal, he tells Peter.  
  
    When he’s officially discharged from medical, the feeding tube is still in and Peter has scratched every wound open again. He ripped out the stitches from the stab wound twice. Tony at least gets the kid into a bath, and the warm water seems to do something to them both. They finally let out of a collective breath they’ve been holding, and all the fight just goes right out of Peter.  
  
    Tony carries him to bed and slips in beside him. Peter narrows his eyes at him - “Hey kid, you’re never too old. Feel free to use me like a teddy bear tonight.”  
  
    He’s not expecting Peter to fall back into physical touch so soon, but he does shift close to Tony as he dozes off, and Tony isn’t willing to move for anything, and certainly not the back pain he’s going to have in the morning.  
  
    None of them were sure what to expect Peter’s recovery to look like emotionally. He allows Tony to touch him, even manhandle him when necessary, so things are normal there, but it’s ten steps back with Pepper and Rhodey, and while he’s okay with Happy being around, he doesn’t let him get close at the moment, which is clearly breaking the man’s heart.  
  
    “I’m sure it’s just a momentary thing,” Tony insists, but Happy doesn’t say anything, just sets down Pete’s favorite smoothie in the kitchen that’s far from where Peter is currently sitting.  
  
    As much as Tony has always worried about Peter every single day, the kid is normally pretty self sufficient. He knows others expect the kid to be babied, but he took out almost an entire ring of terrorists by himself, and normally he’s pretty content to get himself up out of bed sharply at 5 am, way earlier than Tony, and he mostly makes his own breakfast and starts coffee by the time Tony gets to the kitchen. Depending on Peter’s mood and what exactly Tony is working on in the lab, he might come down with him, or he might stay up on their floor and work out gravitational pull on Mars by himself or build his own models.  
  
    After the incident, Tony basically has to sit on the kid to keep him from pulling out the tube or bothering anything. They’re still having a problem getting Peter to put on any weight at all again, and he’s had a low grade fever from infection because he can’t keep his hands out of his wounds.  
  
    Tony helps him draw the engine of his favorite car on his cast, he distracts him with movie marathons and streams a convention happening in California about some new farming practices to help sustain future populations because Peter had been reading Yeroz’s book about the future of farming before he got kidnapped. His kid is a mess, but he’s brilliant and his interests and passions never fail to make Tony proud.  
  
    The feeding tube comes out. The wounds close and the cast comes off. They end up doing two surgeries to make sure everything is set correctly and won’t bother him later down the line. That sets off another delightful round of Peter not eating, but they manage without a tube.  
  
    Time heals, or heals as much as it can. They’re both able to fall back into a routine, and Tony struggles to make up for work as much as possible from the east coast to stay close for now. Eventually, he does need to make some business trips, and Tony cannot believe is incredible luck.  
  
    Snatched right from his hotel room - the watch with built-in repulser is immediately grabbed and smashed, and his suit is blocked from his outgoing call.  
  
    Better him than Peter. He tries to keep his breathing under control, tries to count forward and backwards by threes over the yelling of the men who grabbed him. They make it to a boat and fuck, does Tony not want to have to swim back to San Francisco.  
  
    He’s got stock of some of the people and items around him by the next day. He’s sure the alert has gone out by now that he’s missing, but no one has told him what they want. No proof of life video is made, no demands. They’re sitting on something, but it might just be a lot of discord between the people running the show more than anything else.  
  
    It’s quiet that night when he hears the side of the hull being sliced open like a can of tuna. Rhodey, he thinks, smiling. It’s not War Machine that steps through. It’s Iron Man - his latest suit that he’s been incorporating nanotech into.  
  
    The two guards in the room with him don’t have a chance to hit any kind of alarm - they’re incapacitated immediately, but Tony notes the gentle way it’s done. Nothing to seriously hurt them, just a targeted high frequency that will make them ill for a few hours.  
  
    “Pete?”  
  
    The suit opens up, and his kid falls out. He’s nervously grinding his teeth and wringing his hands. “Come here.”  
  
    He lets himself be folded into Tony’s side. He’s still bound, but they sit there for a moment with Peter pressed into him. Tony kisses the top of his head and Peter screws up his nose and huffs.  
  
    “You did good, kid. Let’s go home.”  
  
    Luckily, Tony is in good condition after his kidnapping - no stab wounds or broken arms. He gets quite the earful from Pepper still: “No more kidnappings this year. None. From either of you. I can’t.”  
  
    Peter actually grins at this, the little shit. Tony already feels better. Rhodey comes by to check on him and asks about Peter flying across the country to get him, his Tony’s armor no less.  
  
    “He’s never worn it before?”  
  
    “I mean like yeah, in passing for fun, but he’s never controlled it. He doesn’t have access to anything in the lab, really. Definitely never actually flown anywhere in it, it was more like I put it on him for science.”  
  
    “For science?”  
  
    “Yeah, big boy, science.”  
  
    Rhodey hums.  
      
    They’re standing over the long kitchen island overlooking the living room where Peter is making Tony a new watch. A new watch that has his own tracking device in it, something that apparently will sync up to FRIDAY but runs concurrently on its own to whatever ends Peter has it set to.  
  
    “Quite the kid you’ve got there, Stark.”  
  
    Tony smiles fondly. “He’s going to MIT after all.”  
  
    Rhodey’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really? That’s great, man! You worked everything out there for his - ” he makes some vague hand motions.  
  
    “Still working on some details, but he wants to go. I want him to go.” Tony lets out a deep breath. “I want him to be normal.”  
  
    To anyone else, Tony would insist until he’s blue in the face that there’s nothing wrong with Peter and that he is normal, but this is Rhodey, and he can’t keep the kid locked away in the tower forever. It is decidedly not normal, he has been told.  
  
    “You’re Tony Stark - no kid of yours was ever going to be normal.”  
  
    They jump when the watch in Peter’s hand emits a loud alarm. Peter’s face is white and his hands are shaking, but he sits calmly until he’s got it turned off.  
  
    “I keep thinking about what it must have been like for him to fly the suit to get you,” Rhodey says. “The noise, the lights. Hell, we both know he gets motion sick in a car on a good day.”  
  
    Tony’s eyes water; he looks away.  
  
    “If he had waited a few more hours, I would have gotten to you, but he did it himself. It’s amazing.” He puts his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Peter’s not normal - he’s amazing.”  
  
    Not every father has the experience of being kidnapped and watching a recently graduated fifteen year old genius break every code in his state of the art lab to pilot what is essentially a controlled bomb across the country to save him, but Tony does.  
  
    It’s not normal for anyone else but him.  
  
    After Rhodey leaves, Tony takes a seat on the couch behind Peter’s tinkering. When he’s finished, there is a mess spread across the floor that he pointedly ignores to crawl up next to Tony. He reaches over, extends just his index finger, and taps across the back of Tony’s hand.  
  
    “Yeah, I love you too, bud.”  
      
  
      
  
   


End file.
